‘Rust’ Trials Leave Clues to Mystery of Live Bullets on Set – and a Likely Answer

The manslaughter trials are over, the criminal investigations closed. But the central mystery of who brought live ammunition to the set of “Rust” is no more solved now than it was the day cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally shot to death by Alec Baldwin on Oct. 21, 2021.

The answer, after two and a half years of scrutiny and two trials with witness testimony, may just be the most obvious one: The armorer did it.

That was New Mexico prosecutors’ going theory, laid bare in their February opening statements against Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Though they asserted she introduced live rounds from her personal stash and then failed for days to detect them as they spread throughout the set supply, there was no burden on the state to prove that — and prosecutors largely scored their conviction by highlighting Gutierrez-Reed’s negligence and sloppy work.

Jason Bowles, Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney, declined to comment for this story.

After the case against Alec Baldwin was abruptly dismissed with prejudice last week, TheWrap combed through all the testimony from both trials, including dozens of photo, video and police bodycam exhibits. A half-dozen key principals and witnesses from the case were contacted and interviewed on condition of anonymity to assess the many theories that have been floated about the original source of the deadly loads.

Among those alternate theories are that munitions supplier Seth Kenney and Thell Reed (Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s father, a legendary trick shooter and Hollywood armorer) somehow brought them after a live-rounds training exercise on the Texas set of the “Yellowstone” spinoff “1883.” Kenney took the stand in both trials and denied any involvement, and no evidence was ever presented that would link him or his PDQ Arm & Prop shop to the live rounds.

Another theory was that “someone” wanted to create mischief for Gutierrez-Reed, who was feuding with Kenney while a union camera crew walked off the job over sloppy safety measures. The “sabotage” theory was suggested by defense teams for both the armorer and Baldwin — though there was never any evidence to support it.

There is plenty of evidence, however, to suggest that the live bullets were on the “Rust” set — even in Gutierrez-Reed’s possession — for several days before Hutchins’ death, and before any of Kenney’s ammunition supply arrived. Though their presence is obvious in photos, they weren’t detected until after catastrophe struck.

Gutierrez-Reed told detectives she had brought two boxes of her own prop ammo over from a previous project, a low-budget Western starring Nicolas Cage. Investigators later admitted that they somehow lost track of one. The other, pictured below, was found to contain a live round.

A month after the shooting, the young armorer reacted with shock when she was told that additional bullets found at the scene tested live. Investigators found about 260 rounds of ammunition in all, mostly blanks and dummies — the only type of ammo allowed anywhere near a movie set.

But mixed in among that number were six live bullets, scattered around in actors’ bandoliers (including Baldwin’s) and on Gutierrez-Reed’s prop tray. In his opening statement for Gutierrez-Reed’s trial, prosecutor Jason Lewis said investigators combed through photos taken from the set in the days before the shooting, and found this:

“In fact, we found a photograph where a live round was sitting right on Ms. Gutierrez’s lap, and she failed to identify it,” Lewis said. “What you’re looking at now is a photograph of Ms. Gutierrez, and on her lap in the lower right-hand corner, you can see that styrofoam casing holder.” 

Gutierrez-Reed was first to point a finger at Kenney, suggesting in that initial police interview that their dynamic had soured. “Honestly, I’m not sure [why there was a mixed box],” she says. “I would say right now, Seth [Kenney] supplies all the boxes. I don’t want to speculate, but he’s also been acting pretty weird toward me personally. We had a whole-ass argument, and we weren’t talking during this whole incident.”

But Kenney’s prop ammunition did not arrive at the “Rust” set until Oct. 12, after the above photo was taken, according to sworn testimony. And it did not match the bullet fired from Baldwin’s gun, according to FBI testing and descriptions and photos examined by TheWrap.

But Kenney’s eagerness to help investigators, offering physical and digital evidence and abundant guidance, aroused the suspicion of defense lawyers, who noted before the jury in both trials that he and lead Santa Fe Sheriff’s detective Alexandria Hancock exchanged dozens of text messages and phone calls in the days and weeks after the shooting. They also noted that it took over a month for investigators to search PDQ Arm & Prop, where they say they found no relevant evidence.

A warrant affidavit for that late 2021 search had posed yet another possibility: That Thell Reed’s stash of leftover ammo from the “1883” training sessions inadvertently made its way to the “Rust” set. Reed had told authorities that at Kenney’s request, he’d taken an “ammo can” of live rounds to the Texas production, where they worked together training actors and stunt people at a firing range.

Reed told detectives then that Kenney brought the unused rounds back to PDQ in New Mexico, and that they might match the “Rust” loads. No evidentiary connection between the two sets was ever established, however.

In his February cross-examination of lead detective Hancock, Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer Bowles established, with some circumspection, that Kenney had access to a safe where ammo was stored. Bowles also pressed Hancock on whether Kenney was “pushing” the theory that the armorer brought the deadly ammo, and even hinted at another “sabotage” suspect.

Though Kenney was not on the set, one of his employees, prop master Sarah Zachary, was. At one point Bowles asked Hancock whether Gutierrez-Reed was ever “insinuating” that Zachary “planted that box of ammunition.”

“Yes,” Hancock replied from the witness box.

“Did you ever find any evidence to support that?” the prosecutor asked.

“No,” Hancock answered.

Hancock also testified later that day that she never found any evidence that Kenney supplied the mixed box, and stopped pursuing that line of inquiry — despite pressure from Bowles and Reed.

In the end, it was a box of ammunition that got Baldwin’s case dismissed — but none of the aforementioned issues. Troy Teske, a law enforcement veteran known to Kenney and Reed, brought ammunition to Santa Fe investigators in March of this year, with that exchange captured on body cam. Prosecutors declared those bullets weren’t relevant to the case after FBI tests determined no match.

But prosecutors failed to disclose Teske’s visit to Baldwin’s defense team, a huge legal lapse that prompted Judge Mary Marlowe Sommers to throw the whole thing out with prejudice — meaning it can’t be tried again.

Gutierrez-Reed is still serving an 18-month sentence — the max for manslaughter in New Mexico – though Bowles filed this week to have her released, based in no small part on Baldwin’s outcome. But in the armorer’s case, prosecutors didn’t make the same disclosure mistake, and it’s not entirely clear what, if any, impact the Baldwin decision will have on her sentence.

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